"Good-by; I hope you will escape the rain." But at the door Elfrida turned and came back. Janet was mechanically stirring the coals in the grate. "Listen!" she said. "I want to tell you something about myself." Janet looked up with an inward impatience. She knew these little repentant self-revealings so well. "I know I'm a beast--I can't help it. Ever since I heard of your success I've been hating it! You can laugh if you like, but I've been _jealous_--oh, I'm not deceived; very well, we are acquainted, myself and I! It's pure jealousy--I admit it. I despise it, but there it is. You have everything; you succeed in _all_ the things you do--you suffocate me--do you understand? _Always_ the first place, always the attention, the consideration, wherever we go together. And your pretence--your _lie_ --of believing my work as good as yours! I believe it --yes, I do, but you _do not_. Oh, I know you through and through, Janet Cardiff! And altogether," she went on passionately, "it has been too much for me. I have not been able to govern it. I have yielded, _miserable_ that I am. But just now I felt it going away from me, Janet--" She paused, but there was no answer. Janet was looking contemplatively into the fire. "And I made up my mind to say it straight out. It is better so, don't you think?" "Oh yes, it is better so." "I hate you sometimes--when you suffocate me with your cleverness--but I admire you _tremendously_ always. So I suppose we can go on, can't we?" "Ah!" Elfrida cried, noting Janet's hesitation with a kind of wonder--how should it be exacted of her to be anything more than frank? "I will go a step further to come back to you, my Janet. I will tell you a secret--the first one I ever had. Don't be afraid that I shall become your stepmother and hate me in advance. That is too absurd!" and the girl laughed ringingly. "Because--I believe I am in love with John Kendal!" For answer Janet turned to her with the look of one pressed to the last extremity. "Is it true that you are going to write your own experiences in the _corps de ballet?_" she asked ironically. "Quite true. I have done three chapters already. What do you think of it? Isn't it a good idea?" "Do you really want to know?" "Of course!" "I think," said Janet slowly, looking into the fire, "that the scheme is a contemptible one, and that you are doing a very poor sort of thing in carrying it out." "Thanks," Elfrida returned. "We are all pretty much alike, we women, aren't we, after all! Only some of us say so and some of us don't. But I shouldn't have thought you would have objected to my small rivalry _before the fact!_" Janet sighed wearily, and looked out of the window. "Let me lend you an umbrella," she said; "the rain has come." "It won't be necessary, thanks," Elfrida returned. "I hear Mr. Cardiff coming upstairs. I shall ask him to take care of me as far as the omnibuses. Good-by!" CHAPTER XXVIII.